One of the most important things any web surfer needs, are a good set of bookmarks. Whether you are a lawyer, like myself, or a school teacher, you need to be able to go back to that great Website you found last month and get something for a client or your classroom.
Bookmarks are just what you think they are. When you start reading Moby Dick, or some other great, large novel, you cannot finish it in one sitting. Therefore, you need to be able to mark your place in the book and be able to go back to that same place the next leisure time that is available. The same philosophy applies to the Web. Almost all Web browsers support bookmarks, which means you can find your way back to the site in the future.
Young Jon comes up to your desk in the computer lab course you are teaching asking where Strawberry Creek, Colorado is, because his father is going to take him hunting up there during the next deer season. You, his teacher, turn to your computer, fire up your Internet connection and go straight to the LYCOS Website and he is duly impressed with his teacher's ability to provide the information he requested: www.lycos.com/roadmap.html
You just finished your biology homework assignment (it's 7:00 am and the school bus is coming over the hill towards your house) and you are concerned about whether the bone in the bottom part of your leg is called the Tibia or the Femur. Off to the web you go and find Human Anatomy On-line to solve the problem and get an A ( http://www.innerbody.com ).
Bookmarks are very important features and you should spend some time organizing them, for to do so is to cut down on your time on the Web and also save you search time. Speaking of search time, the search engines (those programs that find everything for you) that I use are for businesses http://www.resources.com/business.htm , www.worldpages.com (find anything, anyone, anywhere), E-Mail and mailing addresses in the USA http://www.four11.com , yellow pages http://www.hk.super.net/yellowpg/home.html , and the friendliest one -- DOGPILE www.dogpile.com .
For you English teachers, several of my favorites are http://www.december.com/text/index.html , www.legal.net, www.ebig.com, http://161.226.4.41/development/html/lib_info.html , www.adventure.com/encyclopedia/ , http://humanities.uchicago.edu/biblio/roget_headwords.html , www.edunet.com/english/grammar/index.html, www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/acro.html , www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/strunk, and www.pcwebopedia.com/index.html . These sites cover almost everything but conjugation. (I have not found a site for that subject yet, but if I do, it will be posted to the Internet Beat Website http://lonestar.texas.net/~weersjt/club/intbeat.html
Yep, now for a lot of legal Websites that I use to help myself and my clients on almost a daily basis. I use the Internet now more than I use books. I can find almost everything I need on the Websites that many an organization has created. For example, in the morning paper, there is an article about the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans finding some Texas law unconstitutional. I want to read this case, so I go to http://www.law.utexas.edu/us5th/us5th.html or http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/default.HTM and find the particular case I need. I need to search for a recent federal (US) court case, but don't remember which one. Well, I search the Website found at www.ljx.com to get my cases.
One of my corporate clients comes in and wants to find some information about a competitor, so, we take a look at the Texas government sites of http://isadore.tsl.state.tx.us/trail/ , http://www.window.state.tx.us/window-on-state-gov.html www.trec.state.tx.us, www.guadalupecad.org, and www.bcad.org. Here, we get the names and addresses of the officers, registered agent, find out if the franchise taxes have been paid, determine the value of subject corporation's real property in Guadalupe and Bexar counties, and do all of the work in 10-15 minutes, which, prior to the Internet, took several days to accomplish.
Do you want to incorporate your business? Want to check out the forms your lawyer prepared for you? See www.sos.state.tx.us/function/forms/index.htm. Need some legal search engines? Try these: www.findlaw.com/index.html, www.hg.org/hg.html, www.lawcrawler.com, http://www.law.cornell.edu/#main_menus, www.lcp.com/The-Legal-List/TLL-home.html, www.howardnations.com, http://www.law.indiana.edu/law/v-lib/lawindex.html, www.fedworld.gov, http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/dbsearch.html, www.ll.georgetown.edu, www.versuslaw.com, and www.ljx.com.
Have I made my point? Outside of having a web browser, the best thing that all of us need badly is the addresses (URLs) for the Websites and webpages that have the answers to our questions.
Now, for some more summer fun sites.
www.usgs.gov (Find maps for almost anywhere [I am a sucker for a map]).
www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/forms_pubs/index.html (Nope, I do not want to wait on the telephone to get an IRS form).
www.texasmonthly.com/archive/top-100.html (Yep, its Texas Monthly's archives).
www.hcampers.com/reg_dir/index.html (Be a happy camper on your next trip).
www.garden.com (The Garden Escape Home page).
www.graphicmaps.com/webimage/countrys/countrys.html (Maps of the World).
www.utexas.edu/depts/beg/ (The Bureau of Economic Geology).
Finally, some additional genealogical Websites for your ancestor hunting:
www.virginia.edu,
www.genforum.com,
www.ancestors.com,
http://www.worldwar1.com, and
ftp://ftp.cac.psu.edu/genealogy.
Through the Internet, I have amassed more than 11,000 of my relatives in less than 8 months. I now receive more than 10 e-mails from researchers each day and another 80-100 e-mails from the various forums that I subscribe to.
May there always be an Internet!!
Tom Crump is a regular contributor to the Internet Beat Column. This article and his previous articles about "ftp" and "Linux", published in June and August of 1998 are posted at: http://lonestar.texas.net/~weersjt/club/articles/IB980906.htm, http://lonestar.texas.net/~weersjt/club/articles/IB980607.htm, and http://lonestar.texas.net/~weersjt/club/articles/IB980802.htm. Tom Crump, -who lives in "Phemie's house" (Euphemia Texas Ashby King, the central character in the True Women novel by Janice Woods Windle)-, can be reached at tomcrump@swbell.net, 303-0272.
To contribute to this column, contact Column Coordinator Gloria R. Rivera at 303-4764, fax 372-1418, riverag@connecti.com, www.seguin.net